


Fevered

by mstigergun



Series: A Dream of Fever and of Fire [1]
Category: Marco Polo (TV)
Genre: Episode: 1x04 The Fourth Step, Episode: The Fourth Step, F/M, Fever Dreams, For The Moment, Just... Not Acted Upon, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited, Unrequited Lust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-07 00:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3153599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mstigergun/pseuds/mstigergun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world is a dangerous place and, while Marco has always been adept at avoiding dangers, at treading carefully and making his way to some semblance of safety, some threats cannot be avoided. Some dangers call him to them. An alternate fever dream in "The Fourth Step," and another read on the subsequent Marco/Jingim interaction.</p>
<p>  <i>But dangers took many shapes, mutable as water and far less translucent, and still there were other threats that remained unknown, secreted away, until preventative action was impossible. Sand that gave way under foot and drew travellers to a slow and crushing death, a snake laying in wait beneath stones that had, until recently, hidden only jewels and secrets.</i></p>
<p>  <i>The tiger in the forest, silent, still, and watching, invisible to those who have not yet become his prey.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Fevered

**Author's Note:**

> Currently stand-alone, with plans to expand. Written entirely at the behest of my wife who, as we were watching this episode and as Jingim reached out and trailed a hand down Marco's throat, turned to me and said, "I ship it," and then, "You need to write that."
> 
> Find me on tumblr here: [WriteTheCalendar](http://writethecalendar.tumblr.com). I love making new friends, so please feel free to get in touch!

The world was replete with dangers, fatted with threats both known and unknown. Some loomed on the horizon, blotting out all brightness from the sky with fingers of sand, or else rolling the eternal blue into a bleak slate grey; these were obvious in their imminent arrival, but impossible to side-step. The coming of a storm, the thunder of hooves announcing war. The inevitability of death.

Other dangers gave warning, demanded attentive avoidance and promised clear path to those who were mindful as monks. A frozen river, splitting underneath incautious feet but remaining clear as panes of glass under more wary and thoughtful tread; a ship sailing over shoals that, if prow went wrong under a slipped hand, would spell death and drowning. The slow navigation of customs and rituals only recounted third-hand but that demanded obeisance still.

But dangers took many shapes, mutable as water and far less translucent, and still there were other threats that remained unknown, secreted away, until preventative action was impossible. Sand that gave way under foot and drew travellers to a slow and crushing death, a snake laying in wait beneath stones that had, until recently, hidden only jewels and secrets.

The tiger in the forest, silent, still, and watching, invisible to those who have not yet become his prey.

The Khan was a known danger, his expectations clear, and although Marco had to navigate a maze of custom and conflicting interest, when his head was about him, he could avoid stepping on ice that would break under foot. He could avoid being swallowed by cold, dark waters. With clever words and clear eyes, Marco managed to find his footing and stand, wary but steady, at Kublai’s side.

And yet dangers came in many forms and there could never be but a single threat against which Marco had to guard himself.

The Khan’s son was a tiger, a golden creature in the shadows who might strike at any moment without so much as a whisper, and his was a danger Marco did not know how to avoid, except through blind fortune.

The threat was made worse through Marco’s own weaknesses, which stole from him any advantage he may have gained through wit and calm.

It began with a snake bite, sudden and unknown, which made his skin burn and his brow prickle and his mind wander terrible and wonderful paths. The cool embrace of the Blue Princess, her eyes as dark as the sky when the moon was new and hidden in cloaks of forgotten stars. Her skin like fresh snow, chilled underneath the soft silks of her robe. The treasures of her body, of her breath against his skin, of her heart and voice as she murmured his name within the curve of his ear.

A danger he knew, but could not resist: the lure of a siren, singing him to the bottom of the sea. And yet, if he was careful, if he stopped his ears with wax and bound his arms and moved ever so cautiously –

But his mind made journeys more dangerous still. The Blue Princess faded beneath him, a cloud of shadow and darkness and desire unspent. The world shifted, the turning of a globe, and he stood upright. The sky above flashed to brightness, a sun as large as the gates to Karakorum – larger, still, growing until it swallowed the sky. Until all was light and fire. His skin flushed under the heat, a searing warmth on the threshold of pleasant and dangerous. He could lose himself in this heat, this light, a greater threat still than the cool gloaming of night and a woman’s embrace.

And, at once, Marco was not alone. A golden prince with a gaze wholly predatory, the languid movement of his hips as he prowled nearer still. Marco’s back against a bare-limbed tree, the bark scraping against his neck, pricking skin, flaying him to nothing but heat and want.

_Your weaknesses are many, Latin_ , breathed the prince, who was both phantom and tiger, the darkness of his eyes burning more brightly than the sun above,  _and the dangers you give yourself to are real and unrelenting_.

Prince Jingim, a tiger and a man and the sun, all at once, stepped closer still.

_I would have you be unrelenting_ , said Marco, and the words tasted like a sweet poison on the curve of his tongue,  _a danger I might embrace._ _A danger I might desire, a ruin I might seek_.

A smile, sharp and curved as a scimitar. The prince’s hand flashed out, fingers catching a fistful of Marco’s hair as a tiger might curl its claws into prey.

Relentless.

Marco’s heart beat as a drum calling to war, the conflict one between the brothers called desire – one to  _live_ , the other to  _have_. In the end, the brother made of ember and lightning prevailed, blooded but victorious. His own hands reached out, grasping, fingers hooked on the brocade  _deel_  slung around the tiger’s narrow waist, and Marco pulled, skin burning, and the sharp smile loomed closer still and –

He woke.

And in his mind were three things: the snake, the curve of a sword, and the prince. All threaded through with a commingling of desire and terror, the flush of want with the chill of fear. The danger he did not expect, and the danger he could see looming.

When the prince prowled into the room, Marco was barely surprised, even as his blood roared against his eardrums. A tiger, who had heard the mewling cry of wounded prey. A tiger, ready to strike.

And strike Jingim did. A hand to Marco’s shoulder, fingers, which had once caught Marco in a snare, pulled him to the fire of wants previously unknown, brushed his skin and at once Marco’s blood began to boil, a viscous amalgam of desire and an aversion, faint as the memory of home, borne from self-preservation.

A fevered dream. Surely, if Marco circled his mind to that knowledge, drew shut the gates of his traitorous heart, he would find himself out of the deep and dark woods – at once dark, at once impossibly golden – and back into the maze of dangers he could find his way around. Back to the dangers he knew how to address.

“The Khan requests that I inquire as to the Latin’s health.” Eyes fixed on his quarry, as Marco’s skin prickled – sweat, and a heat deep in his body, beneath the juncture of hip bone and firm muscle, one he would will away if only he had a moment to recover, to gather his thoughts and corral his desires behind walls more impenetrable than those of Xiangyang.

Jingim’s stare flicked away, and once again Marco could draw a cool breath into his chest. “Will he survive?” the prince asked, as Marco thought forcibly of moonlight, of freshly fallen snow, of the Blue Princess, of shadow and darkness and cold.

But the respite was brief, and, once again, Jingim turned on Marco. “Father will be most pleased,” murmured the prince at the doctor’s response, lips curving like the edge of a blade again, as they had when Jingim’s fingers caught Marco and held him fast, and the double image – a palimpsest of dream and reality – kindled the fire glowing beneath Marco’s skin.

A hidden danger, once revealed, had lost the largest share of its threat, so long as one was wary, so long as one guarded against these new realities. And yet Marco found that his steps faltered, his mind stumbling as if glutted with too much airag. When he spoke, it was with a voice he only recognized from the fever dream, rubbed raw by heat and the golden allure of things he could not, should not, want. “And– the prince?”

Jingim’s mouth curved again. He spoke, and Marco listened, but his thoughts reeled in delirium. He saw the prince standing before him; he saw the prince, standing in his dream. A man, a tiger, a proxy of the sun itself: hot and bright enough to blister Marco’s fair skin, to burn him into ash and nothing more.

The prince reached out with his dangerous hands, and touched Marco’s throat. His thumb brushed the corner of Marco’s mouth and Marco thought, for a moment, of turning his head into the touch, pressing the flat of his tongue to the flat of the prince’s thumb.

But even those lost to danger could have moments of clarity.

“So close to your throat,” said the prince. A finger, drawn down the flushed skin of Marco’s neck, trailing heat. “A few inches lower, the venom would have stilled your heart.”

If Jingim’s hand came away bloodied, tipped with talons fresh with everything Marco had once believed about himself, he would be unsurprised.  _I would have you be unrelenting_ , Marco thought, Prince Jingim’s hand lingering over the vein through which Marco’s lifeblood galloped. An almost gentle touch, measuring the speed of Marco’s heart, the heat of his skin, as surely as the tiger observed the faltering resolve in his prey’s eyes – the slow dissolve of the will to run, the slide into the inevitable.

Some dangers could not be escaped nor outrun. Even the cleverest mind could not outwit the coming of a storm, nor the crumbling of the earth beneath his feet.

Nor the roar of a fire larger than himself, pressing in close on all sides. Marco’s heart shuddered at the barest touch, and even his eyes, glassy with fever and the last remains of a dream too dangerous for words, could see the moment of the prince’s insight. And that danger drew Marco to lean forward, against that single point of contact. To lean into the burning of the tiger’s stare.

“Tread carefully, Master Polo,” his own name a purr against the back of Jingim’s throat, even as the prince withdrew his claw, leaving Marco bloodied and flayed, “or you will find yourself a more permanent sleep.”

The world was replete with dangers, and Marco had become a master at skirting those that could be avoided, of learning the unspoken patterns that carved out rare and safe paths for those with keen eyes and keener minds. But the tiger that stalked him in the woods was also the siren that sang him to ruin, its promise of destruction – under sharp teeth and dark eyes, or against the craggy bottom of the sea – too alluring to avoid. The inevitable, unrelenting pull of gravity, toward a hole in the center of all things from which he could never emerge.

Marco woke from his fever dream to find the whole world aflame, with nowhere to turn for safe harbour. With nowhere to turn for respite.

Perhaps more shocking still: his realization, sharp as metal biting into flesh, as teeth stripping muscle from bone, as venom singing him to delirious truths, that this danger could not be outrun nor outwitted. That this danger was one he wanted, with the desperate need of a man driving himself to ruin. He had willingly succumb to his fever and there could be no safe road back.

_I would have you be unrelenting_ , he thought, burning, his blood turned to poison within his heart, and afterwards, the incantation changed and became a glorious and awful litany within his mind, endlessly circling, pursuing, hunting:  _I would have you. I would_ have _you._

**Author's Note:**

> I know, lots of _wanting_ with not enough _acting_ , but I will certainly continue and make sure they get inside each other's robes before long. This show is a verifiable gold mine of super homoerotic moments, which I will shamelessly exploit for my own purposes and choose to diverge from canon whenever I feel like it (with, you know, the appropriate heads up). Next up: bonding over feeling conflicted about fathers!


End file.
